Everyone who I know that's read Atlas Shrugged (including myself) turned into a selfish jerk for at least a month after reading it. God help us if the "Ayn Rand temporary jerk phenomenon" is unleashed through movie theaters all at once.
It's a good book but like anything else people extrapolate the points beyond recognition and additionally interpret it to re-enforce their own views, regardless of how unreasonable those views might be.
I said something similar on the last Ayn Rand thread, and indeed these threads do start to sound repetitive.
I read literally hundreds of books in school with socialist, feminist, existentialist, collectivist, or fatalist themes. I read exactly one author in all of American literature with the theme that an individual could shape his own destiny and that capitalism (you know, that evil economic system that has sort of created unprecedented global prosperity) is okay. That author is Ayn Rand.
I was an obnoxious Randroid for awhile. But Ayn gave me the ability to stand up for myself intellectually, to question establishment ethics and politics, and to eventually question and reject her. I think that's a valuable experience for a young person to have.
I suppose my parents thought I was a "selfish jerk" when, after reading The Fountainhead, I ginned up the strength to leave the religion that made me depressed and a little suicidal in my youth. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
In my mind, the inventors of the computer revolution did more good for humanity than all the starry-eyed kids going into the Peace Corps or working soup kitchens. How often is a teenager going to hear that? It's certainly against establishment ethics. It's not something that you can safely assert in mixed company. People will label you a sociopath if you state it. But I think it's true.
Is the worldview of myself and Ayn so dangerous that people should be completely shielded from it? If so, watch out for this movie. If it's done right, it's going to fill lots of heads with dangerous ideas.
Personally, I like dangerous ideas. I think we could use more of them. When people's minds are filled with safe ones, the intellectual climate stagnates.
Lastly, to those who say her characters are not believable, I reply that neither were the characters in the movie "300". This isn't Hemmingway. She has her own style. You hate her politics so you're saying she's a bad author. Admit it and we can discuss the real issues.
I've yet to find one person that says "I think Ayn makes some great points, but I really think she writes like crap". Rather, it is usually "Ayn is a hateful and evil person. And besides, her books are total crap. Nobody should ever read her works for any reason."
I think Ayn makes some great points, but I really think she writes like crap
Actually, i say something on these lines very often, if a discussion related to Ayn Rand is happening around me. I would say Ayn makes some good (and obvious) points, but at least for me, Fountainhead was not a "reading pleasure". It was too long and overstretched at places, when it could have been far more succinct.
Someday, i might actually get the dust off 'Atlas Shrugged' in my bookshelf, and read it.
That latter point is the problem. Atlas Shrugged is a fine novel, and I'd excuse people for being jerks if they were in fact doing the brilliant things that AS says jerks are allowed to do, but people don't do that. They read it and interpret it so that whatever they were already doing, they're allowed to keep doing.
Okay, let me clarify, because I like The Fountainhead much more. But you make a very good point.
The Fountainhead is the better book. It's better edited, the characters are better, and the plot is much more secure. Atlas Shrugged isn't nearly as good if you don't have Roark and Toohey and Dominique fixed in your mind, because Rand doesn't spend time making her characters realistic in Atlas. She just assumes that you can make the leap from her Fountainhead characters.
That said, Atlas is the more epic novel, and it's a conclusion in a lot of ways to the battle started in The Fountainhead. It's poorly-written, but in terms of pure pulp enjoyment there's nothing to beat it. That's why people get addicted to it: it lays out a fairly complex philosophical idea and attaches pirates, Spanish conquistadors, sci-fi weaponry, mad scientists, and - of course - all-American capitalists into the fray, and lets it culminate in lots of really fulfilling scenes that are terrific fun if you're okay with ignoring poorly-written stuff. It's a quagmire of a book, with several awful chapters leading up to two or three incredible moments - the ribbon-cutting of the train, the court scene with Rearden, the Galt's Gulch chapter - and those are the moments that stick in mind, especially the first handful of times you read the book.
So I say "fine" meaning "not terrible", which I know is a horrible corruption of the idea behind "fine". Atlas is worth a read for people who liked The Fountainhead, and it offers stuff that book doesn't have to offer, even if it's not as good a novel.
It's better in terms of encapsulating her philosophy. However, it's a worse story, the characters are more shallow (and the more interesting ones, like Fred Kinnan, get lip service at most), and the writing is atrocious at points. It deserves the satires of it, because it's got a lot of weak points.
When I was 19 I first came across an Ayn Rand quote about subsidies. It so perfectly captured my own views that I went to the campus library and asked for the largest fiction book by Ayn Rand. So I started off reading Atlas Shrugged with nothing more than a single quote on a single topic by her.
The first 25 pages were BRUTAL, but after that I was hooked. I finished the book in less than a week then bought the book for myself and read it again. I didn't need to make the leap from Fountain Head at all.
While that's kind of true (after reading a book which extols rationality and logic above all, seeing constant irrationality in daily life does tend to make someone a little apprehensive), I find another common symptom of the post-Shrug reading is a feeling of helplessness and even to some a sort of depression - you see how society crumbles around the heroes in the book, only to see many parallels in reality. The feeling that society cannot be fixed is an overwhelming one to someone who takes Rand's ideas seriously, and does unquestionably lead to the feelings of anger (this feeling is not just isolated to Rand readers either, but to anyone who looks at the "big pictures"). It usually takes a while for new Objectivists to shake that feeling and start focusing on the good things in life, rather than the bad. But before that, the desire to "Go Galt" and abandon society for your own quasi-utopian refuge becomes very strong.
Personally, though, I find the "selfish jerk" thing more as a result of "The Fountainhead" than "Atlas Shrugged," though at the same time, I think TF is the right book to read before AS. TF prepares you for the "self", while AS applies all that to society.
All that said, while Atlas Shrugged can be an extremely depressing book (the constant feeling of "How can this get worse" coupled with the inevitable "Oh, this is how"), it's also a very uplifting book. After almost every reading session with AS, I found myself with a burning desire to work, to improve my business, to "go get it" and seize life. The heroes resonate very well with those who absolutely love their work.
The only other book that has come close to as uplifting a feeling as Atlas Shrugged (for me) is Founders at Work, because many of the people interviewed in that book share the same passion for their work as the heroes in AS, and pull off monumental achievements.
Will the movie be any good? I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see someone like Cate Blanchett play Dagny.
Of course you mean everyone you know who actually liked the book. I didn't much like it, I like style, and there wasn't much of that. And, of course, I read "The Grapes of Wrath" right before - two polemics from opposite points of the political spectrum, but Steinbeck can actually compose a sentence.
How about not flogging the dead borse? Anyone who's read a classic novel or two can see that Rand is a lousy writer. Yes, we do know that. Can we therefore agree that it's what she says that is interesting not how she says it?
It's a good book but like anything else people extrapolate the points beyond recognition and additionally interpret it to re-enforce their own views, regardless of how unreasonable those views might be.